Their Story...
Another Story……we love this name! We all have one and how important they all are to hear, to share, and to be told. This is our story, another, not unlike many but very different in the same manner. Ours began without our knowledge or understanding of how God has an ultimate plan.
We both grew up in small Texas towns in conservative, Southern Baptist households with similar family values. Childhood holds very special memories for both of us as we had loving families who supported us in all we did. As we grew older, we both realized we had different feelings and began to understand we were gay. The hardest of these times were in church as it became more difficult as we sat listening to similar sermons proclaiming the feelings we had were condemned, hated and were not part of the Kingdom of God. It’s in these moments that we start to compartmentalize parts of our lives unable to express our true selves. This painful suppression of feelings due to religious and social expectations from family and community was one of the hardest parts growing up gay and not being able to express it.
Years pass as we move through middle school, high school and then college continually suppressing a most real and important part of our lives. It is based in this fear of shaming or hurting our families and community and the denial of our true selves that we both proceeded with our heterosexual marriages.
Our lives paralleled each other in many instances, and this is a recurring theme before having ever known each other. After years of marriage and the birth of Evelyn Wall and the adoption of Jacob and Joshua Moody, we both entered counseling with our then respective wives. It was through this time in counseling that we both, for the first time, verbally announced ourselves as being gay and finally began to deal with the realization of what we knew so long ago but could not previously express. Similarly, but separately, we experienced some very difficult times in our lives. We each entered a very long and arduous divorce, both our fathers passed away completely unexpectedly within a month of the other and we both lost the support of our church family. We were left to process our coming out experience with minimal support and certainly with no one that could personally understand the challenge this process entails. As we processed through this, new lives began along with reconciliation of our faith and who we truly were created to be. In looking back at these events, it seems evident that our similar experiences were part of a bigger plan for us to be each other’s best partner.
In 2004, our paths crossed for the first time. We met online and began a telephone relationship for almost 6 months. We both had children and were very concerned for their safety and who we brought before them. More importantly we were both under very strict legal restrictions from our divorces about what could and could not happen around our children. We talked every night for months learning more about one another and all the similarities in our lives. We finally met for lunch one day at small café in Oak Lawn as we both had anticipated this day for so long. It was after this initial face to face date that we decided to move forward in our relationship. Still concerned with all our restrictions set forth by the courts, we introduced each other to our kids and began to spend more time together.
During those long conversations at the beginning of our relationship, the most important one we had was if we were going to make this relationship work, we would have to remain strong in our faith and allow God to work within us. Our faith is very important to both of us and we knew we couldn’t move forward unless we were both committed to remaining strong in those beliefs and growing that together as a couple.
Fifteen years later, we now have three grown kids in college and have experienced a myriad of events in our lives as a couple and family. We recollect on these and the struggles, roadblocks, and joy we’ve encountered and how we managed to maneuver through it together. It has been our faith in one another and our faith in Christ to guide us through these times. They haven’t always been easy, but we can honestly say that we wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world.
One of the greatest connections is to have the support of a church family that encompasses the “whole” you and has allowed us both to join, serve and celebrate our relationship with the church as it should. We are proud to be members of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth and be among such a diverse family of believers. As we have said often, Broadway allowed us to fully serve Christ as our “true selves” for the first time. There is no greater experience than this.
Within many of these connections at Broadway, we met Mark and Aubin Petersen. It has been amazing to have such friends and allies as them and we have been honored to tell our story through the incredible avenue of Another Story. Through their openness, we have met others who boldly share Another Story!
We look back at our past and see the hand of God among it all. Our story continues……
